sexandsensibilities.com

Re-posted from Newsbreak.

By PURPLE ROMERO

They pushed for family planning and even set up condom shops

MOUNTAIN PROVINCE, Philippines—All the noise in Manila about the Reproductive Health bill doesn’t quite find resonance here in the serene towns of Sagada and Bontoc. Without fanfare, the two municipalities enacted their own laws that have integrated reproductive health projects with various sectors in the community and local government.

We visited this province a year ago, in February 2010, to see for ourselves how they made their RH Municipal Code work. By no means was it easy. For the longest time, residents believed that the more children they had, the better for them. “The more children you bear, the more you’re recognized as a rich person,” then Bontoc Mayor Frank Odysey told us. “We told them, have some birth spacing.”

Families here had always aimed for nine or 10 children, according to Dr. Diga Gomez, Bontoc’s municipal health officer. They did not subscribe to the idea that the more mouths to feed, the more financial problems for the family.

The same was true in Sagada.

But change came, bit by bit, beginning in 2007, when the RH Code was approved in Bontoc and Sagada. Gomez said couples grew receptive to the RH Municipal Code after they learned that the program wasn’t just about condoms but also addressed maternal health and helped prevent sexually-transmitted diseases.

Local officials were encouraged to enact the Code as part of the country’s commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), a United Nations program that aims to eradicate extreme poverty, improve maternal health, and reduce child mortality rates, among others, by 2015.

It also helped that the local Church in Sagada, the Anglicans, were supportive of the Code. The Anglicans built the Episcopal Church in Sagada, one of the town’s landmarks, and they have been active in promoting health education among Sagada residents.

Under Bontoc’s and Sagada’s RH Municipal Code, municipal health officers were tasked to train community volunteer health workers and barangay health workers on extending prenatal care to mothers.

To promote the principles of responsible parenthood, schools and teen centers were also built in partnership with the Department of Education. This was seen as an alternative to sex education in the high school curriculum, a concept that still shocks parents, Gomez said.

POP shops

The local health office also partnered with the gay community in Bontoc to promote the use of condoms. “The gay community is also growing here in Bontoc. They are helping us in the advocacy. [We are not limited to a few sectors], for we have gay doctors too,” she said.

In our visit, we saw a POP shop near the town hall of Bontoc, which sold RH products such as condoms for P15 per box of three. This was cheaper by P3 than the condom price in convenience stores. The local governments of Bontoc and Sagada signed a memorandum of agreement with DKT Philippines, the manufacturer of Trust and Frenzy condoms, to open the POP Shop with a capital of P25,000. In Bontoc, the shop’s main clients were midwives because they distributed these to women in remote areas.

To “discourage promiscuity,” the POP shops in Bontoc and Sagada don’t sell condoms to high schools students, said Sagada health officer Evelyn Capuyan. They only sell condoms to teenagers if they show proof of marriage.

Capuyan added that what made the RH Code less problematic in Sagada was the support of the Anglican Church. “It was only the Roman Catholic Church here which opposes the use of artificial contraception,” Capuyan said. “But even the Catholics here use contraceptives.”

Anglican priests were active in teaching in Sagada villages, and one of the priests then was even a nurse, according to LGU presiding officer Eduardo Umaming. The Anglican Church does not consider contraception as a sin against God.

Husband’s role

Sagada culture also recognizes the role of husbands in promoting maternal health, Umaming said. What boosts the “macho” image of Sagada men is their skills in doing household work when their wives are recovering from giving birth, according to him. “The more labada (laundry), the more macho,” Umaming said with a laugh.

But while Bontoc and Sagada have started what the national government could not, the two municipalities now have to prove that their RH programs work in favor of development. Both Gomez and Capuyan claim that so far, there has been an increase in the number of mothers who are covered by reproductive health programs.

They drew this conclusion from the following indicators: that mothers were attended by skilled attendants, that there were minimal maternal deaths, and that there’s been an increase in contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR), or the percentage of women between 15-49 years old who practice any form of contraception.

For Sagada, the percentage of CPR among married women rose from 37% in 2007 to 67% in 2009.

The local governments also have to track population growth in the last three years. Bontoc ‘s average population is 25,000, Gomez said. Sagada’s population increased to 11,281 in 2009 from around 10,000 in 2008. Umaming said though that given its resources, Sagada’s “manageable population” would be from 12,000 to 13,000.

The new mayor in Bontoc, Pascual Sacgaca, told Newsbreak he supports the RH municipal code, which was enacted under his predecessor.

Sagada’s Mayor Eduardo Latawan, on the other hand, was re-elected last year, thus the continuation of his reproductive health programs.—Newsbreak